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October 2003   
F E A T U R E S

Interview: No Ifs, No Butts
Rugby League Professionals Association president Tony Butterfield on his battle to deliver a collective agreement for NRL players.

Unions: National Focus
In this month�s national wrap: Noel Hester meets a heavy hitter talking up open source unionism, truckies front the suits at Boral�s AGM, tales of corporate bastardry and Medicare birthday revelry.

Industrial: Fools Gold
Unions have thrashed out a string of protocols with the NSW Labor Government. Some, now, are questioning whether they are worth the cheap, imported paper they are written on, reports Jim Marr.

Bad Boss: Bones of Contention
Byron Bay chicken boners have nominated thier boss for a Tony after seeing their entitlements plucked.

History: The Gong Show
In late September the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC) celebrated 75 unbroken years championing the rights of workers in the coastal Illawarra region 80 kilometres south of Sydney, writes Rowan Cahill.

Politics: The Hawke Legacy
The election of the Hawke Labor government twenty years ago holds some salient lessons for today�s Labor Party, writes Troy Bramston.

International: Sick Nation
As Australia celebrates 20 years of Medicare�s universal health coverage the crisis facing American workers in need of medical care is a useful reminder of what we�ve got � and what we stand, writes Andrew Casey.

Economics: Closed Minds
Philip Mendes looks at the political influence of right-wing think tanks, their financial backing and asks why the left hasn�t been able to get its ideas out there.

Review: Mixing Pop and Politics
He's had relations, with girls from many nations... but Billy Bragg seems to like us Aussies as much or even more than any of the others, writes P�draig Collins.

Poetry: One Size Fits All
There once was a man from the Lodge - Who tried hard, our poems, to dodge... Resident bard David Peetz is back!

C O L U M N S

Postcard
North By Northwest
Phil Doyle returns from up north, where he survived on nothing but goodwill, good people and a great big orange bus.

The Soapbox
The $140 Million Patriot
It would be hard to imagine a steeper slide from hero to zero than the experience of Richard Grasso, the now-deposed head of the New York Stock Exchange. writes Jim Stanford.

Media
Bush's Bad News Blues
The Bush Administration is cooking up a new campaign 'to shine light on progress made in Iraq', writes Bill Berkowitz.

The Locker Room
A Tale Of One City
Phil Doyle gazes into the crystal ball for signs of life, and finds that somewhere the horses are running in the wrong direction.

Culture
With Banners Furled
There is no better account of the glory that was the annual Labour Day marches than that given by Kylie Tennant in Foveaux, her fictional account of life in inner Sydney in 1912, the year she was born.

Politics
The Westie Wing
Our favourite Macquarie Street MP, Ian West MLC, reports on the world of NSW politics.

Postcard
The Cancun Wash-Up
The dramatic collapse of the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, last month has been followed by a deafening quiet from Geneva, Brussels and Washington, writes Peter Murphy.

E D I T O R I A L

The Monk Off Our Back
It should come as no surprise that Tony Abbott has been dragged from his workplace relations portfolio just as his $60 million assault on the CFMEU finally unravels.

N E W S

 Concrete Boot for Democracy

 Picketers Get Blue Ribbon Result

 ICAC Call at Mudgee Abattoir

 Telstra on Charges

 Unis Walk Over Federal Bullying

 IRC Shoots Rooster that Quacked

 Ugly Australian Riles Timorese

 Medicare Gets Abbott For Birthday

 Business Council Opposes Salary Vote

 Rail Workers Call For Self Defence

 ACT Leads On Industrial Manslaughter

 Thumbs-Up for Awards Binding Subbies

 Entitlements Crash into Hangar

 Blackouts on NSW Horizon

 State Govt Told To Clean Up Contracts

 Would-be Presidents Face Union Probe

 Activists Notebook

L E T T E R S
 A Hard Act To Follow
 Which Boss?
WHAT YOU CAN DO
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The Soapbox

The $140 Million Patriot

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It would be hard to imagine a steeper slide from hero to zero than the experience of Richard Grasso, the now-deposed head of the New York Stock Exchange. writes Jim Stanford.

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On September 17, Richard Grasso resigned as chairman and CEO of the exchange. Public details of his compensation (including a deferred payout of $140 million) had ignited a storm of outrage - especially among key pension funds and other financial heavyweights.

With investors struggling to rebuild their faith in the wake of accounting scandals and the dot-com meltdown, this revelation of blatant excess and cronyism at the heart of finance capitalism was too much to take. Grasso's compensation was hardly the most obscene in U.S. business. Compared to the $706 million that Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison took home in 2001, for example, it looked downright humble. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. After all, Grasso didn't actually run a real business, producing things of real value to real human beings; he ran a glorified casino. And the dealer's take in this particular card game was far too rich for the main players to tolerate.

Ironically, Grasso's exit came two years to the day after his finest moment. On September 17, 2001, Grasso rang the bell to re-open the Big Board after the terrorist attacks of September 11 closed the market for four business days - its longest closure since the 1930s.

That week, Grasso was a national hero. Even as the dust was settling over Lower Manhattan, TV stations broke away from White House press briefings to provide live coverage of his updates on the exchange's efforts to re-open. Then Grasso presided over a ceremony, both sombre and jingoistic, as trading recommenced. The bald, 5-foot 7-inch chairman punched above his weight as he ominously promised, "Those who took those buildings down will hear from us soon."

His stand won widespread public acclaim. "He's the best chairman we've ever had," enthused one Wall Street CEO. Asked about his determination to re-open as quickly as possible after the attacks, Grasso said, "One of the things you must do is restore people's confidence" - words that would haunt him just two years later.

In concrete economic terms, re-opening the stock market was an irrelevant event. In fact, if a more panicked sell-off had occurred (as it was, the markets shed something like $750 billion in paper wealth that first day), it would have been counterproductive. But in America, the stock market is not just an economic institution. It symbolizes the nation's reason for existence. Ringing the bell, and reigniting the frenzied paper chase, was a symbol of resilience.

But apparently Grasso was in it for more than just patriotism. His 2001 compensation, paid during the NYSE's darkest hour, reached $25.6 million - including a $16.1 million bonus and a $5 million "special award." George Bush has asked all Americans to make sacrifices in the war against terrorism. Some die in Iraq. Others ring bells at media events and take home multi-million dollar bonuses for their troubles.

The rot exposed by Grasso is deeper than can be fixed by any tinkering with the NYSE's governance structure. It reflects the corrupt greed that is the engine of the U.S. economic model, both celebrated and reviled. Indeed, Grasso was ousted just as things were getting fun again on the stock market. U.S. markets are up over 20 percent since March, creating something like $4 trillion in paper "value" in the process. And thanks to the Bush tax cuts, targeted at financial investors, these gains are largely tax-free.

Yet in economic terms America has never been more divided, in stark contrast to Grasso's proclamation in 2001 that "we are one country today, committed, unified." The richest 1 percent of Americans owns half of all financial wealth - more than the bottom 90 percent put together. Share prices are booming in part because of widening corporate profit margins, driven in turn by a surprising surge in U.S. productivity. U.S. companies produce 6 percent more in GDP today than they did two years ago, but they do it with 2 million fewer workers. Most economists accept that higher productivity is good in the long-run, but for the time being this efficiency translates solely into mass layoffs for American workers. Perhaps this gap between Wall Street and Main Street, the widest ever, helps to explain why Grasso (unlike other better-paid business executives before him) had to go.

Yet surely Grasso's fall from grace is also a parable for the rise of American empire, and its surprisingly quick erosion, since September, 2001. The attacks were a horrific, heinous crime. But it is now clear that America's political and business elites responded to that crime in a particular and aggressive manner, making the most of new opportunities to reassert U.S. political and military dominance. Two years later, U.S. forces are mired in two small impoverished Asian countries, and the Western world is more divided than at any time since 1945. America's brash worldview has already lost as much credibility as the NYSE's compensation committee.

Richard Grasso stood before the world two years ago and pledged to fight the enemy, economically and militarily, in defense of his battered but proud nation. Now we've learned that perhaps the real enemy was within.

Jim Stanford is a research officer with the CAW. A version of this column appeared in the Globe and Mail


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